Frequently it is necessary to perform operations in locations that may be difficult or dangerous for a human being to access. For instance, the location may be dangerous for a human being because of an environmental contaminant, because of the presence of hostile parties or weapons controlled by hostile parties, or because the location is such that a human may undergo at a high risk of injury or death to access the location. Further, the locations may be difficult to access, and enabling a human to access the location may require a large amount of time, labor, and costly equipment.
Some operations, including installing, maintaining, and repairing sensors, may currently be performed by humans. When the operation must be performed in a dangerous environment, the human is put at risk of harm. Also, it may be desirable to perform operations remotely with a device, which may be preprogrammed to autonomously perform an operation, or may be controlled by a human operator.
An alternative to using a human to perform some operations is to use an air drop. In an air drop, a component, such as a sensor, may be dropped from an elevation or deployed using a ballistic delivery system. These systems are limited in accuracy. Guidance systems for the ballistic delivery systems may be expensive and may still have large inaccuracies in the placement of the component. Additionally, it may be impossible to place the components accurately on a vertical surface, as the components may simply land on a surface, and gravity may cause the component to slide on a surface that is not perfectly horizontal. Finally, it may be impossible to retrieve or repair the component after it has been deployed.
Manipulator arms are used with ground-based robotic systems to examine threats to personal injury, investigate the presence of environmental contaminants, collect samples of materials, and to disarm explosive devices. These ground-based robotic systems may have difficulty reaching areas in rugged terrain, or it may take a long time to reach the desired location. Additionally, the ground-based robotic systems are only capable of reaching locations on the ground or close to the ground.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved method of performing operations in environments which are difficult or dangerous for a human being to access.